


The Extra Miles

by beltsquid



Category: Uncharted
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Married Sex, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-27
Updated: 2013-02-27
Packaged: 2017-12-03 18:49:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/701480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beltsquid/pseuds/beltsquid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While on assignment in Central America, Elena ponders the measure of a year, and Nate stumbles across a secret.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Extra Miles

Elena dealt in figures—facts were the lifeblood of a story, after all. Dollars, miles, body counts, dates, hours, minutes. Numbers folded themselves into the pockets of her mind seemingly of their own accord, these days. It was a force of habit, the marking of a good journalist. And when the alarm on her phone blared to life, waking her in the small grey hours of the morning, the first thing that sprang to mind when she noted the date was that today marked a year since he had left. But couldn’t let the thought linger, there were more immediate and important concerns for the day to tend to. She had a story to cover. Besides, it was a pointless thing to dwell on: they had been back together nearly as long as they had been apart, and aside from the usual spats and a minor kitchen fire, they were doing well. She silenced the alarm, swung her legs over the side of her itchy hotel bed, and padded her way to the shower. 

Something about showers made them perfect for contemplation: she got her best thinking done in the shower. Standing under the comforting warm stream of a good shower head often gave her insight into some aspect of a story; giving herself time to not only wake up, but stand and think was part of the reason she set her alarm to wake her at an early hour. But her mind wasn’t busy contemplating the danger and tragedy of El Salvador’s street gang crisis. She tipped her head back, let the water rinse her scalp, and thought on how long a year was. That night that had ended in heated words, slammed doors, and an empty apartment seemed like another lifetime ago by now—so much had happened in Yemen alone. And yet when she brought to mind the memory of those last words before he said before leaving— _this isn’t working_ —a knot still formed in the back of her stomach. There had been lots of words since then, including “I’m sorry”, both spoken and not, as well as the occasional “I love you,” which he still had trouble with. But they had never talked about what had happened that night, not really. It was alluded to at oblique angles, a subject they furtively danced around, as though time alone would heal that wound.

And she just happened to take the assignment which would take her out of the country on this day. That was a Nate move, she realized, cranking the faucet handle off and wringing out her hair. “You’re a bad influence on me,” she said to no-one, and stepped out of the shower. She wondered how long it would be like this, having one anniversary she cherished, and one she hid from. Perhaps after this assignment was over, she would put on her big girl pants and have that conversation and step right in those eggshells that they had been tiptoeing around. In the meantime, she had a job to do. As she snapped a towel off the rack, she heard the tell-tale buzzing of her phone receiving a text message. She toweled herself quickly and rushed to where her phone lay on her bed, her hair dripping as she went. It took a few swipes from her damp fingers to get the phone to respond, and when she finally wrangled it into cooperating, she found a text from Nate:
    
    
    Out to a job. Probably won’t be home when you get back.

“That’s informative,” she said, tossing the phone back on the mattress. It was short, too the point, and left her with more questions than answers, as was often the case with him. It would have been nice to at least know which country he was headed to. She swore under her breath and returned to getting ready for the day. Those Salvadoran officials weren’t going to interview themselves.

***

Shadows were just beginning to hang long across the streets of San Salvador and the afternoon sunlight grew ever more orange by the time she watched her camera crew packing their equipment for the day. Her fingers drummed uselessly over her phone for the upteenth time since that morning. In the hours since she received his message, she had tried calling Nate no less than eight times, all of which went straight to voice mail. Text messages of her own received no reply, and to top it off Sully wasn’t answering his phone, either. Her irritation with not knowing where they were was edging into worry about what they could have gotten themselves into. Nate hadn’t been researching anything in particular lately, but who knows what he could have been dragged into on short notice?

“Hey,” said Mike, her cameraman, snapping her back to matters at hand. “We’re going to go to Santa Elena to grab dinner. You should come along. I mean, it’s pretty obvious right? Santa Elena? Eh?” He emphasized his point by tapping her shoulder with the back of his hand. It took every ounce of self-control not to give him a death glare. Mike was fresh out of college, cocky, and could count the number of times he had left the United States on one hand. He’d been all too relieved to find that Burger King could be found in El Salvador, and eagerly took his meals in whatever U.S.-style fast food joint he could find. 

“I can’t,” she replied, holding up her phone. “I have something I need to look into.” Mike rolled his eyes and packed his camera into the back of their rented SUV, while her producer, Steve, crossed his arms and gave her a pointed look.

“Be careful about what rocks you go poking under. These gangs aren’t messing around. Don’t forget that—”

“—Filmmaker who was murdered by the _maras_ four years ago. I’ve done my research,” she said. Looking up that case had been chilling; a grim reminder of what she was up against down here. Homicide rates in the country were astoundingly high, and most were gang-related. But for once, she wasn’t going to be prying deeper into the story after the day’s shoot had wrapped up. The mystery of where Nate had run off to had her more preoccupied at the moment. She held up her hands and added: “Don’t worry.”

“Don’t worry? Ms. Fisher, you have something of a reputation for your … enthusiasm. You get in deep with these stories, and one of these days you are not going to get yourself back out.”

“First of all, this is a personal matter that has nothing to do with the story.” Her hands went to her hips and she narrowed her eyes at Steve. “But that being said, I am not sorry for being good at my job. And I don’t know about you, but I don’t intend to make a fluff piece down here. You guys go have fun shopping at the malls by the American embassy, I’ll be at the hotel.” She didn’t wait for what he had to say to that, and turned to find a cab. 

Steve’s words lingered at the back of her mind long after she negotiated her way into the back of the first licensed cab she could find. It was true she had gotten in over her head in Nepal when chasing Lazarevic, and she had no intention of letting things get that crazy again. They hadn’t stirred any hornets’ nests down here, at least not yet. She’d yet to interview any gang members, only police officers and a priest. One of the policemen sounded less than pleased with the gang truce that the government had recently brokered, which made her wonder if he was a member of Sombra Negra. A line of questioning she thought better of pursuing at this moment—ruffling the feathers of a vigilante death squad probably wasn’t any safer than going after their prey. And as much as she found Mike irritating, she would hate to have to appear at his mother’s doorstep and be the one to tell her that her son was gunned down in a country very far away. Doing it once had been heart-wrenching enough. And if something were to happen to her …

Recalling Nepal made her shrapnel scars itch. She scratched them idly through her blouse while she watched the city of San Salvador pass by her window. If something happened to Nate and Sully while she wasn’t around, chances were she would never hear about it. Calling Sully again couldn’t hurt, so she fished her phone from her pocket and dialed. This time she was not bounced directly to voice mail; the line actually rang. She twiddled the fingers of her free hand in anxious anticipation, hoping that Sully would answer.

“Hey there, sweetheart,” he said, his voice slightly tinny over the phone. But the earthy rumble of his voice was unmistakable, and she could not be more happy to hear it. In the background she could make out the clinking of glasses and the indecipherable chatter of a crowd.

“Sully! Glad I caught you,” she said, trying to downplay her immediate relief, although the smile in her voice was obvious.

“What can I do you for?”

“You wouldn’t happen to know where Nate’s headed for this job he just landed?” She bit the corner of her lip after she asked the question, the fingers of her other hand still rubbing against each other, albeit more slowly now.

There was a pause at the other end of the line. “I couldn’t tell you,” he said. “But the kid told me that it was really important, and that he had to be there today.”

“Oh no,” she said, rubbing her temple. If Sully wasn’t telling, or worse, did not actually know, this was bad.

“I’m sure he’s fine,” he replied. 

“How can you—”

“—Trust me. Nate’s alright.” Elena didn’t appreciate being cut off or stonewalled. She huffed loudly into the phone. “I’ll let you know if anything changes,” he continued. “Enjoy San Salvador. And, ah, keep out of the east side of town.”

“Yeah, I got it,” she sighed. “Talk to you later.”

“Uh-huh. Later, sweetheart.”

The call ended, and for all of the rumbling and honking of city traffic, the music on the cab’s radio, and the muffled din of chatter at crowded street corners, everything felt awfully quiet.

***

Elena waited by the elevator for a minute, watching the unmoving yellow light which indicated which floor the elevator was currently servicing before deciding to take the stairs instead. She hated to stand still, anyhow. Climbing the steps herself made her feel some small measure of accomplishment, which she needed, as her one lead on what Nate had gotten himself into had been a bust. Sully had clearly covered for Nate, and she didn’t like the implications of that. Whatever he was doing was probably highly illegal—although with Nate that was generally a given—and incredibly dangerous. All she really wanted was to be told these things, at the very least. He owed her that much. Turning the situation over in her mind made her more angry the more she thought of it, and by the time she reached her floor, she was taking the steps hard, her feet stamping a heavy drumbeat up the stairwell. She leaned into the door to the hall where her room was and opened it. The hallway smelled of old linoleum, punctuated by hints of an acrid ammonia-based cleaner, which irritated her nose, and she paused to scratch it while she reached for the key to her room.

The key turned out to be unneeded, because she found the door to her room hanging slightly ajar upon reaching it. Fear pulled a tight knot in the pit of her stomach. It was well past noon, and there was no sign of the maid service in the hall, so her room could not be in the process of being cleaned. She must have struck a nerve with somebody today. Without touching it, she leaned in close to the door, straining to hear what movement, if any, was going on inside.

Someone was using her shower.

She stood up straight and raised an eyebrow in an unspoken question. What the hell was going on? The room was definitely hers, she had a good memory for numbers and would not likely forget or mix up something as simple as a room number. Showering didn’t seem like the action of a would-be assassin, or at least not a very good one, so she opened the door and stepped inside. The sheets on her bed were all but undisturbed, save for the telltale indentation on the duvet and wrinkles on the pillows indicating that someone had been laying on top of the bed recently. Aside from that, the room appeared undisturbed. Taking a deep breath, she raised her fist to the bathroom door and began to knock.

“Hey! Hey, I don’t know who you are, but you’re in the wrong room,” she hollered. There was no answer from the other side, only the sound of water splashing against porcelain. She slammed the side of her fist against the door again, harder this time, and repeated herself, except this time she remembered to yell in Spanish. She threatened to call the front desk, for good measure.

The shower creaked to a stop, and a wave of panic washed over her. What if this really was a showering assassin? Did they have a gun in there? Why didn’t she have a gun? What the hell was she doing just standing here? She assessed the room, looking for anything she could use as a makeshift weapon. The only things which weren’t nailed down were the iron and the coffee pot. The iron seemed a better bet, so she slid the closet door open, grabbed it, and hunkered in a ready position next to the door.

It swung open, a familiar figure greeting her with a sideways grin and a towel draped around his waist. “Oh, I’m pretty sure I found the right room. Elena, you’re off work earlier than I expected,” said Nate.

“Nate?” She asked, dropping the iron to the floor. “What are you doing here? I thought you were on a job!”

“Surprise,” he said.

“‘Surprise?’ Really? Do you have any idea how worried I’ve been all day? You know I hate it when you do that thing where you maybe give half the details about what you’re doing! I was ready to expect the worst!” He could have just shown up in town and called her to meet for lunch or something instead of all this unnecessary drama.

“C’mon, Elena, I—” He began to argue, but stopped himself short. After exhaling loudly, his eyes dropped to the floor, then back to hers. He tried again. “There’s no job. I just wanted to see you today.” He admitted. “So, surprise,” he repeated, his voice soft and nearly a question, and in that moment she knew that he knew which day it was. He reached to pull her into his arms, which she fell into it easily. Staying angry at him for going out of his way to make her worry was hard to do in his freshly-showered, warm embrace. She squeezed him tightly in return, smiling against his bare chest. “Care to tell me what you planned on doing with that iron?” He asked, his usual humor back in his voice.

“I thought you were an intruder. I was improvising,” she shrugged in his arms. He chuckled and kissed the crown of her head.

“Good thing I wasn’t,” he said. 

“Sully flew you down here, didn’t he?” She raised her head to look at him. It was all falling into place now: she couldn’t get in touch with either of them because they’d been in the air. Sully’s plane didn’t nearly have the speed or range of a commercial jet. Considering airspeed and needing to refuel, they couldn’t have been in town very long.

“No use in having that plane if it doesn’t get used. I’m impressed that he didn’t ruin the surprise, though. He’s never been good at keeping his mouth shut.” He said, rightly assuming that she had called him.

“Uh-huh. I knew he was hiding something, but he steered his way out of the call pretty fast.”

Nate chuckled.

At the edge of her vision, she noticed that the door was still ajar, and she wriggled out of his arms to shut it. “You left the door open,” she admonished as she did so.

“I don’t have a key. I didn’t want to get locked out when I made a trip to the vending machine.”

“Which begs the question of how you got in here in the first place,” said Elena, placing her hands on her hips. That revelation did little to make her feel better about her security here.

“Well, it was a little harder than I expected,” he said, his face becoming unreadable. “Because you’re not checked in under your name. You’re checked in under mine.” He spoke the last sentence as a revelation, a boyish smile rising on his cheeks.

Her face went hot. The name issue was more complicated than she expected. In principle, she’d always maintained that when she got married, she’d keep her own name. However, that decision had never prevented her from mentally ‘trying on’ the names of the men she’d seriously dated, just to see if they’d fit. Some cultural paradigms were hard to escape from, even in her own mind. And ‘Elena Drake’ she liked. But she was nothing if not stubborn, and when it came time to signing relevant documents, she had remained Elena Fisher. There hadn’t been much time to think about details like that when they married, and it was only after all was said and done that she realized she could have kept Fisher as an on-camera professional name. Or perhaps she would have stuck to her guns on keeping her surname anyway. Regardless, she developed the habit of using the name ‘Drake’ as an alias when checking into hotels, a detail that she had never told him.

“It helps to go under a different name with stories like this,” she said, tucking an errant lock of hair behind her ear. “It makes you harder to find if someone comes asking.” She knew that he had a small string of aliases, himself. This much he would understand.

“You’re blushing.” He stepped toward her, arm outstretched, fingers brushing over her burning cheek. “I think it has a nice ring to it,” he added, bending over, drawing his face close to hers. He kissed her ardently, lips parting to slip his tongue into her mouth. Heart racing like a schoolgirl, she kissed him in return. And it must have been highschool when she last felt like this, blindsighted and even abashed by her feelings. Nate had never brought up the name issue with her, and somewhere in the back of her mind she always assumed that he wouldn’t be up for sharing the name, anyhow. “Drake” was his thing, after all. And yet from the way he was kissing her, heated and messy, fingers tangling into her hair, he clearly didn’t mind her borrowing it from time to time.

“Does this mean I can call you ‘Mrs. Drake’?” He asked between panted breaths, pulling his lips from hers just far enough to talk. His arms dropped to his sides, and a moment later the towel hanging from his waist fell to the floor. 

A simple question that demanded a long discussion, but it was a far cry from “this isn’t working.” She grinned. “For now” was the best answer she could give, but before she got the chance to speak, her cell phone rang. Nate groaned and threw his head back dramatically in protest.

“I have to take this, it’s work,” she said. “If I don’t, Steve will think I’ve been kidnapped or something.” Nate made a pathetic whining noise in the back of his throat, and fell face-first onto her bed, bed springs creaking beneath his weight. The phone continued to ring, the volume of her ringtone growing more insistent as seconds ticked by.

“Elena Fisher,” she answered, snapping her mind out of the romantic fog it had been thrown into.

“Glad I caught you before you got yourself mixed up in some trouble,” said Steve. Elena rolled her eyes.

“Did you think I was going to take a cab to the rough side of town and interview street thugs with my cell phone?” In a pinch, she would resort to something as lo-fi as a smartphone’s camera to get a story, but nothing about this particular story demanded that. Gang violence was a nebulous problem, it wasn’t something you could pin on one man or even a singular cause. It wasn’t like tailing Lazarevic, where bringing down one man and his organization could certainly prevent further suffering. Her interviews today made it clear that this was like fighting a hydra: there were too many heads to cut, with more growing in their place. The truce was an effort to bury the beast under a rock, as it were.

“Just making sure I didn’t lose my reporter.”

“I’m right where I said I’d be,” she said, her patience for him wearing thin.

“And that personal matter?”

“None of your business, but it worked itself out.” She raised an eyebrow at Nate, who still lay bare-assed and sulking on the hotel bed.

“Good, good. What I wanted to let you know was that I’ve been making a few phone calls since this afternoon, and I got us into La Esperanza tomorrow. It’s gonna be gritty, it’s gonna be real. Lend some edge to this piece—that’s what you’re looking for, right?”

“That’s perfect, actually.” She balanced the phone on her shoulder, pressing it against her ear while her hands went through her back pockets in search of her journal and a pen. As much as she found herself butting heads with him, Steve came through for her more often than not. If she wanted to hear what the other side was like, El Salvador’s largest and most infamous prison was a good place to start. “What time?”

“Later rather than sooner,” said Steve, his voice laced with a veneer of disgust. “Mike had some bad McDonalds. It isn’t pretty.”

Elena sighed audibly, and opened to a blank page in the journal and wrote “AFTERNOON(???): JAIL” Not that she had plans of sleeping in, but it was nice to have a vague idea of where her day was headed. “I’ll check in on you guys in the morning,” she said.

“All right. You have a good evening,” he said, and hung up.

“Going to jail tomorrow,” she announced, sliding the phone back into her pocket. Nate rolled over and sat up, his fists balling into the covers.

“Mariona?” he asked.

“La Esperanza,” she replied, mentally noting that it was a terribly ironic name for a prison.

“Same thing,” he said, correcting her with a tone that indicated he knew this fact all too well. “I, ah, probably shouldn’t tag along with you tomorrow, then,” he said.

“Were you a ‘guest’ there previously?” She knew Nate had a record, a fact she accepted long ago. But it still managed to exasperate her from time to time.

“Me? No, no it wasn’t me. But there might be an old business associate of mine there who wouldn’t appreciate seeing me around.”

“Gotcha.” She sighed and reached down to run her fingers through his dampened hair. “What am I going to do with you?”

Nate looked down at himself and back at her, quirking an eyebrow. He was still quite naked. “I had a few ideas about that. One idea, actually.” He reached up and took her wrist, pulling her hand from his scalp, and pressed a kiss into her palm. He kissed her again, this time on the soft flesh of the underside of her wrist. Her heart fluttered, and it took little convincing on his part for her to fall forward and slide into his lap. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and kissed him. His skin felt cool beneath her fingers, the heat from the shower already ebbed away by the open air. While her hands mapped out the expanse of his back, fingers tracing over bones and muscles and scars, he dipped his head forward and trailed kisses along the line of her jaw.

“You never answered my question,” he said, his voice a husky whisper next to her ear.

“Yes,” she breathed. His lips found hers again, and he kissed her hard, his hands touching and groping her in an unplanned frenzy. Her fingers went to the buttons of her blouse, fumbling over each of them while Nate dipped his head and planted kisses on her neck. After shrugging out of her blouse and tossing it to the floor, she got to her feet to kick off her shoes and remove the camisole she wore underneath. Nate followed suit, unable to keep his hands off her, and assisted her, his hands sliding beneath the hem of her top and pulling it over her head. He went right back to kissing her, hands sliding along her back and over her ass.

“No interruptions this time, Mrs. Drake” he said, powering off her phone. She had to look twice to realize that he had lifted the phone from her back pocket. It went onto the nightstand, followed shortly by her wallet. He looked to the bed, an idea appearing on his face. “That comforter is really itchy.”

She laughed in agreement, and he tore it free and let it fall to the floor, revealing the comparatively more comfortable sheets underneath. “Much better,” he said, and kissed her again, lowering to the bed. As she laid her back against the sheets, he undid her pants and pulled her free of them, and her socks for good measure.

“Much better,” she echoed, raising her eyebrows, and settled herself against a pillow. Nate regarded her with a fond smile and lowered himself on top of her, straddling her thighs with his own. He kissed her deeply, his tongue probing her mouth while she ran her hands over his bare skin. Nudging him to give her space, she sat up, unhooked her bra, and tossed it aside.

“Mm, good thinking, Mrs. Drake,” he said, his hands covering her breasts as he lowered his lips to her neck. He got to work at leaving a mark that she would have to cover in the morning. But she didn’t bother to protest.

“You like saying that,” she gasped.

“I do,” he said, his breath hot against her neck. He brought himself up to look her in the eyes, a question obviously at the back of his throat. But he must have thought better of it, and simply kissed her again, his hands massaging her breasts. She could intuit what he wanted to ask—if she liked hearing him say it. In the heat of the moment, hearing his voice thick with desire, she liked just about anything he said. But it had some appeal beyond even that, else she would not bother using it to check into hotels in the first place. She still didn’t know where she stood on the whole complicated issue just yet, so she concentrated on the sex instead. 

Breaking from her lips, he turned his attention to her neck again, and then over her collarbone, and finally her breasts. His mouth lingered there, his tongue stroking each nipple in turn, one hand reaching down to rub between her legs over the fabric of her panties. She whimpered in anticipation, mind wandering to what she wanted him to do to her. He continued to suck at her breasts for another minute before lowering her shoulders to the pillow again and pulling her dampened panties from her legs, fully exposing her need before him. With a low rumble in the back of his throat, he began to work himself lower on her body. His tongue drew a line from her breasts to her navel, where he stopped and turned to pay special attention to her left side. He lingered on her scars, kissing them, his tongue tracing outlines with a feather-light touch that made her tremble. 

Kisses trailed down her belly, in the hollow of her hip, over the inside of her thigh. Slowly, he brushed his fingers over her apparent need, opening her to him, and he brought his lips to hers. The hot, wet, touch of his tongue against her clit made her gasp and roll her head back in pleasure. She felt him smile with satisfaction to her response before continuing, flicking his tongue against her while he curled his arms around her thighs, hands pressing into her hips. She rocked against his mouth, reaching a hand down to dig her fingers into his thick hair and hold him there. He moaned into her when she pulled his hair. She raggedly called his name and begged him not to stop, never to stop, and he reached up with one hand to fondle her breast as he continued. He made love to her with his mouth until she came, one hand wrapped around and jerking his cock to keep him hard.

When she did come, calling his name and losing herself to the pleasure coiled within her, bucking wild, legs squirming, toes curling into the sheets, he held her fast. Grinning, he made a show of wiping his wet chin, and kissed her. The scent and taste of herself on his lips turned her on, and she made a low moan in the back of her throat. He pitched his hips against her, pressing his erection against her thigh, and whispered into her ear: “Are you ready for this?”

Elena nodded, and he shifted in place, teasing her with his cock. He sat up and surveyed her, an anticipatory grin on his face. He grabbed his cock and brushed the tip over her opening, then leaned forward and thrust the shaft along her clit, teasing her further. She whined in the back of her throat and spread her thighs wider. A devilish grin split his face, and he did it again. She squirmed impatiently, pushing herself against him.

Either taking the hint or unable to wait any further himself, he slid himself into her, his voice a hoarse but satisfied groan. They had been sleeping together for so long that his body was nearly as familiar to her as her own. During the times when it had been days or weeks or more since the last time they’d had this moment, she felt a bit like she was welcoming him home. She let herself smile at her own sentimentality, and pulled him to her for a kiss. After a few moments of holding the kiss, Nate began to roll his hips, causing the bed to creak while rhythmically driving his cock into her. It was slow at first, with him taking the time to kiss her and knead her breasts in his palms. Her hands slid along his chest, brushing past his smattering of chest hair, nails digging lightly into his well-muscled torso. Something in him turned, and he hovered over her, his eyes fixed on her, and he rode her harder.

The events and worries of the day disappeared; her thoughts were only in the moment, conscious of the rising heat between them, and their broken, shuddering breaths. His pace was relentless, and he made love to her for many long minutes with her cradled in the crook of his neck while drove himself into her, filling the room with the wet sounds of their bodies smacking together. With a kiss pressed against her temple, he sat back, opening space between them so he could reach down and work her clit with his thumb while she pitched her hips into his. She ground against him greedily, the touch of his cock within her and his fingers without driving her need. And it was enough to make her come undone again, hips rocking unevenly, back arching off the mattress, all the while feeling disarmed by the intensity of his eyes gazing into hers.

“Atta girl,” he whispered coarsely, and kissed her forehead when he leaned over her again. She pulled him close against her, digging her fingers into his hot, sweat-slicked skin, and crossed her legs over the small of his back. Coming alone wasn’t enough for her, she still craved him, anticipating and wanting his own hot release to fill her. Cradling the crook of his neck, she muttered incoherent encouragement into his ear as he bucked his hips, hard and fast and ragged, a race to his own completion.

Though the encounter had been spurred by the question of names, the one he called over and over like a mantra as he thrusted into her was the one he’d always called her by. She was simply Elena, and when she cried out for him in return, he was Nate. Yet when she reached to kiss him as he came, her tongue mingling with his as he spilled himself inside her, even that distinction hardly seemed to matter. After a couple of final lazy thrusts, he pulled out and rolled onto his side, one arm stretched out over her, his hand casually splayed over her breast. She turned to face him, heaving for breath and unable to articulate anything much more than a smile. In return, he grinned crookedly, evidently satisfied with a job well-done. They laid like that for a while, saying nothing while the sounds of the city crept back into the room. Birds chattered, their trills exotic to her ears; traffic sputtered in the street, and somewhere in the distance she could hear the sound of an excited crowd, something she found to be unmistakable in any language.

“So,” said Elena, finding her voice again and breaking the silence between them. She raised a hand to his face and scratched his stubble affectionately. “Do I take this to mean that you want me to change my name?”

His eyes dropped away from hers, and he idly picked at the bedsheets. “I, uh, dunno. When I looked through the registry and saw ‘Elena Drake’ listed, I knew it had to be you and … I really liked it.” He looked back up to her and shrugged. “But I wouldn’t ask you to.”

She grinned, relieved. “Look. Professionally, I’m always going to be Elena Fisher. I built my career with that name. And changing my name after I got married was something I never really considered. But …” As her voice trailed off, she reached for his hand and twined her fingers with his. With another breath, she continued: “but there are plenty of Fishers. Aunts and uncles and cousins, and their kids. And there’s only one Drake.” He glanced away at the pillow at that, suddenly looking overwhelmed and confused in that way he did whenever she approached these difficult subjects.

“Elena, you really don’t have to …”

“I don’t,” she agreed. “But the offer’s there.”

He had no answer but to kiss her, long and slow and hard. “I love you,” he murmured upon breaking the kiss, the words nearly lost as they gasped for breath. The subject was still open, but he had come to the only important conclusion on his part, and she was fine with that.

She kissed his cheek and pressed her forehead against his. “I love you too.”

And in that perfect moment, her stomach growled, reminding her that she had not eaten since breakfast. Nate chuckled and tossed a glance in the direction of the window. From the color of the light streaming into the room, the sun was due to set within the hour.

“There’s time for a late lunch … or an early dinner. I bet if we walk around, we’ll find a decent pupusa cart,” he offered.

“Sounds good,” she agreed. Hot, fresh street food beat McDonalds any day of the week. And there wasn’t much point to traveling the world without experiencing the local cuisine, really. 

She reached for her scattered clothes while he pulled his travel bag from where he’d stowed it beneath the bed. Her pants had landed beneath the window, and after shimmying into her panties again, she slid over the other side of the bed to grab them. Outside her window, a wedding party was spilling out of a church across the street. The bride and groom were lingering for pictures while their families milled around on the sidewalk and into the street. Traffic slowed into a knot around them. Stepping into the legs of her pants, she watched the scene, a fond grin on her face. She didn’t notice that Nate had crept up behind her until he wrapped his arms around her bare waist.

“... Do you feel like you missed out on that?” He asked, his voice quiet.

“No,” she said. She liked the look of weddings, of big dresses and bigger parties, and music and happy couples, but she had never been the type to plan her dream wedding. In fact, the prospect of putting something like that together sounded like more trouble than it was worth and a waste of money that could be better spent traveling. Their short-notice civil service had been fine.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes!” Her affirmation apparently didn’t satisfy him, as his fingers tensed into her skin and he buried his face in her hair. 

“Elena, I really screwed things up last year,” he said in a rush. “And, I don’t know, maybe if I had started things right—”

She turned on her heels to face him, and pressed a finger over his lips, shushing him. They both knew what he was saying wasn’t true. The biggest wedding in the world would not have made up for that creeping obsession with Drake’s secret voyage and his rivalry with Marlowe. He dropped his hands to her hips and played with the belt loops of her jeans. “I’m not missing out on anything right now, and I don’t need dresses or jewels to prove that,” she said.

“But what if I just want to see you in a nice dress?” He shrugged and gave her a goofy smile, attempting to play off the conversation as mere silliness.

“Look,” said Elena, prying his fingers from her belt loops and twining them with her own. “Maybe in, say, ten years, we can have one of those vow renewal ceremonies, and we can do all that fancy stuff that we skipped.”

Nate looked down at their hands for several long moments before his eyes met hers. The idea had come to her in the moment, and truth be told she could take it or leave it. She just wanted to gauge his reaction. “Ten years? That’s planning really far ahead,” he said, squeezing her hands tightly.

“Yeah, it is,” she agreed. “And I plan on being there for all of them. No matter how many pirates or explosions or kitchen fires we run into in the meantime. What about you?”

Nate looked at her, and out the window, and back to her again, a smile spreading across his face. For once there was no trace of fear in his eyes that usually came with these talks. “I do,” he said, and bent to kiss her.

**Author's Note:**

> I didn't set out to write about the name issue, or a sex scene for that matter. Both of those just kinda worked their way in there. Anyway, I don't have a particular stance on whether or not Elena 'should' keep her name or take Nate's. The issue is intensely personal and more interesting when it's complicated. I hope I managed to convey that.


End file.
